The Colorful Times » Film

Nothing But a Man (Now Showing)

Paul Boakye — Thu, 27 May 2010 11:39:14 +0000

Shot in black and white in 1964, Nothing But a Man is a simple, poignant film that tells the tale of one man’s struggle to break the chains that threaten to bind him to a life of drink, servitude, and irresponsibility.

Set in the segregated South of 1960s America, and written by Jewish filmmakers, director Michael Roemer and cinematographer Robert M. Young–after travelling through the region and immersing themselves in African-American life–this is arguably one of the best movies ever made on how racial prejudice stifles manhood, destroys families, and shatters communities.

With stellar performances from the two main leads, Ivan Dixon (later of Hogan’s Heroes) and jazz singer, Abbey Lincoln, Nothing But a Man should be compulsory viewing in all Sociology lessons and film schools.

Ultimately, though, this is a film most impressive because it’s nothing but a love story set amongst the harsh realities of racism in America. And you don’t see that very often; black characters considered suitable romantic leads for cinematic fiction.

The film has been deemed “culturally significant” by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Nothing But a Man¹ was reputedly the favourite film of Malcolm X.

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This film is not part of the black independent film movement but rather what Donald Bogle calls “Black Art Films.” Bogle says, “[Appearing] during the first half of the 1960s, a quartet of inexpensively but sensitively made motion pictures offered grimly realistic and cynical looks at black America” (200). Other films of this sub-genre included John Cassavetes’ Shadows (1961), Shirley Clarke‘s The Cool World (1963) and Sam Weston and Larry Peerce’s One Potato, Two Potato (1964). Nothing But a Man, positioned before the effects of the Black Power rebellion, coupled with Killer of Sheep coming after the height of the rebellion, demonstrate how little life in the Black community had changed despite the legitimization of the civil rights movement and the fury wrought by the black power rebellion of the late 1960s.

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And the Oscar goes to…

troyf17 — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:22:55 +0000

Another Oscar ceremony, the 82nd in fact, has come and gone. This year at The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, we saw Sandra Bullock take home the best actress Oscar for her role in The Blind Side, where she plays a smart, strong, rich, attractive mother, with a loving family, who takes in a fat, poor, stupid, black boy and turn his life around.

Mo'Nique accepts the Oscar for best performance by an actress in a supporting role for 'Precious': Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire' at the 82nd Academy Awards Sunday, March 7, 2010, Hollywood, LA.

Also on Oscar night, Mo’Nique won best supporting actress for playing a fat, violent, mother on welfare, who looks on, while her partner commits incest on their daughter.

In the 82 years of Oscar ceremonies only five black actresses have won an Oscar:

Hattie McDaniel in Gone with the Wind (1939) for playing a maid.
Whoopi Goldberg for her comic turn in Ghost (1990).
Jennifer Hudson for playing a singer in Dreamgirls (2006).
And of course, who can forget Halle Berry, the first black actress to win a best actress Oscar…for Monsters Ball (2001)? In the film Halle’s husband (P Diddy) is on death row, and she sleeps with his prison guard.
And now, Mo’Nique in that role above from Precious (2010).

Is it just me, or can anyone else see an unsavoury pattern emerging? Maybe there’s a simple explanation.

There are not that many stories and films with black characters?
The Sandra Bullock parts aren’t being written for black actresses?
Black actresses aren’t being cast for roles like Sandra Bullock’s in The Blind Side?

Whatever the explanation, something needs to change. I for one am sick and tired of films where black characters are portrayed as victims, criminals, entertainers, and sexual objects! But somehow I don’t think that things are about to change any time soon. Do you?

The Blind Side has made US box-office history, becoming the first, solely female-led film to rake in more than $200m (£125m). Sandra Bullock has also won the best actress Critic’s Choice Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and the People’s Choice. I’m clearly alone on this.

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The Shawshank Redemption Song

J Hill — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 20:44:42 +0000

It was a flop when it was released in the cinemas, but The Shawshank Redemption is now everybody’s favourite ‘prison movie.’ Shawshank’s fans regard it as a modern-day parable, an uplifting tale of triumph over adversity – it’s a prison movie, but it’s also more than that.

For its star Tim Robbins, the themes are universal: “…although not everybody has been in jail, on a deeper, more metaphysical level, many people feel enslaved by their environment, their jobs, their relationships – by whatever it is in the course of their lives that puts walls and bars around them.”

Though a movie buff, and a lover of fiction and storytelling myself, it’s this ‘deeper, more metaphysical level’ that I have a problem with. Like ‘drug movies,’ ‘prison movies’ cannot help but both glamorise and trivialise the lifestyles of the people they portray.

Similarly, the ‘prison movie’ is seldom really about prison – prison is a metaphorical backdrop, a stage on which attractive folk can struggle, succeed, and impart perfunctory lessons about the human condition, hopefully before the cinemagoer gets bored. Moreover, the typical structure of the Hollywood movie cannot help but give the lie to the reality of prison life. The priority of the filmmaker is to keep the audience engaged, to progress briskly along a predictable narrative arc towards a logical and satisfying conclusion.

Of course, the filmmaker would argue that his or her job is to entertain rather than to educate, but as someone who works in a prison, I can’t help but find the fundamental, if necessary, untruth of almost all prison movies – even the beloved Shawshank – infuriating. By making the prisoners’ journeys symbolic and their struggles allegorical, cinema both romanticises and diminishes the truth that lies behind the fiction.

Real prison life is not romantic. It is not a backdrop against which great metaphysical dramas are played out. Prison life is routine and methodical – it does not have the inexorable narrative momentum of the movies, no promise of a heart-warming pay-off. One day bleeds into the next, and into the next, and into the next. Battles won and lost in prison are not epic or figurative. The hardships endured are not stops on the road to deliverance. Each day is a dreary accumulation of tiny indignities, which break as many spirits as they harden.

One of the most iconic moments of Shawshank comes when Robbins’ Andy Dufresne uses his privileged position with the prison governor to gain access to his office and broadcasts the strains of Mozart over the tannoy system. One by one, the prisoners drop their tools, stop playing basketball, and stand listening, transfixed, in awe. Morgan Freeman’s honeyed tones impart the heavy-handed, sentimental learning point; “And for the briefest of moments – every last man at Shawshank felt free.”

What, for many people, was the most inspirational moment of the movie was, for me, the most troublesome. For them it delivered a poignant message about the innate dignity of the human spirit – for a moment, these prisoners are ennobled by the power of the music, they are freed by it, reaffirming Robbins’ ‘deeper, more metaphysical’ message that the only prisons that exist are the ones in your head.

For me, there was something deeply patronising in the implicit casting of the prisoners as ‘noble savages,’ momentarily shaken out of their bovine mental slumber. Moreover, while the idea of prison’s being ‘a state of mind’ is one that may be immensely palatable to the viewing public, the pragmatist in me wishes to point out that prison is also a large, grey building where young men and women watch vast swathes of their lives ebb away. A poignant moment it may be, but for me it always feels like a profoundly dishonest one.

There is something quite pleasant about playing the cynic. I won’t lie; I’ve rather enjoyed bursting the sentimental bubble of more than one Shawshank
devotee in my time by rolling out one version or another of the above argument. It’s syrupy; it’s hackneyed; it’s patronising. And the killer blow, “I should know, I work in a real-life prison don’t y’know.” Mmmmm, the sweet taste of a moral victory, garnished with a healthy dollop of intellectual one-upmanship. You can’t beat it.

However, what to the cynic is a healthy scepticism of the overtly sentimental, and a refusal to reduce life to a patchwork of clichés is, to the believer, nothing more than an arrogant denial of life’s emotional reality. And sometimes life delivers a blow to the gut that even the most ardent cynic cannot ignore.

Mine came a few months ago, as I sat in the chapel of the prison where I work, dutifully – I thought – attending a performance by a handful of prisoners that had been entitled ‘Rock Shop.’ A well-known musician had spent the previous three days working with them to put together an hour-long show. I had heard them rehearsing and, in truth, had turned up not expecting much, but wishing to be seen to show my support.

Taking my place on one of the long, hard pews, I steeled myself for what I anticipated would be an hour of artless percussion-bashing and little more. But, as the first few numbers rolled by, I was incredibly impressed by the virtuosity of some of the players, and the overall quality of what they had managed to produce in so short a time. I was enjoying myself, and could feel the atmosphere in the room slowly shifting. As we in the audience listened, and the players played, it somehow began to feel…less….well… ‘prison-y’. But, I thought, only in the same way as your last day of school used to feel less ‘school-y’ because you were allowed to wear your own clothes and bring in board games to play. We were being informal, and it felt good.

Around half an hour in, as the players tuned up between songs, a small black man in a too-big t-shirt, with a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes discreetly made his way to the front of the stage. He shifted bashfully behind the microphone as an acoustic guitar strummed, and then he began to sing.

“Old pirates, yes, they rob I;
Sold I to the merchant ships,
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit…”

Here is where the professional cynic begins to lose his way. A moment of intense emotional clarity; the players, the prisoners, engrossed in their music, in this hymn to freedom, this Redemption Song; the audience captivated – taken captive – by the simply strummed guitar, the beautiful, keening melody that floats above us, and transforms us; a sense of being somewhere else, certainly not in a prison, not in any place of incarceration; not in any place at all, in fact.

“But my hand was made strong
By the ‘and of the Almighty.
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly”

Soon we are clapping. Soon some people are on their feet. Soon, some people have tears in their eyes and the room is bathed in a sense of escape. We, the audience, give ourselves up to the music; we are being allowed to listen, but this – I want to describe this simply, so that the words don’t disfigure it – this was a gift that the prisoners were giving to themselves.

Something came alive inside the room in that moment, as we swayed and clapped, and watched the small figure at the front of the room – eyes closed, voice clear and resonant – cast off his prisoner’s clothes and embrace freedom for us. There was no Morgan Freeman voice-over to summarise and clarify what we were sharing – if only there had been, we might have been able to hold onto it, take its buzzing potential, and do….something.

“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; None but ourselves can free our minds.” Marley’s call to arms rang out loud and clear. The same ‘deeper, more metaphysical level’ I had often derided before taking on an urgent, pleading truth – take it, make this moment last. Maybe we can learn something. Or maybe we can just stand here and sway, and listen to this beautiful music forever.

But as the final chords played out, and the room erupted in applause, it was already ending. Like the flame of a candle, fluttering and gently unravelling before being extinguished, the song was over, and the applause subsided, leaving only smoke and the memory of something natural and incredible. The audience sat down, the players put down their instruments and began to tune up for the next song. The small black man in the too-big t-shirt and the baseball cap pulled low over his eyes stood down and discreetly made his way back to a corner seat until he was lost in the crowd.

Before long the concert itself was over, and we went back to our lives, the clarity of that moment – pregnant with all the possibilities of the human spirit – forgotten in our surge back toward the comforting certainties of life. For us, train times; for them, bang-up. Looking back, the weird energy of that moment seems more and more like a flaw in the design – being allowed to peer through a window that wasn’t meant to be open. Or maybe a clue, but we just haven’t worked out how to fit the pieces together as yet.

“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery.”

It was just a moment – it existed in our heads for only a little more than three minutes. There was no handy Morgan Freeman-voiced summary because the truth of the moment could not possibly be distilled in that way. I dare say it was different for all of us – gloriously universal and intensely personal all at once. All I know is what it meant to me. All I can say is how incredibly poignant and powerful it was to witness a group of life-sentenced prisoners making fantastic music together on a grey afternoon, in a grey building that eats lives, in the South of England. And it seems especially fitting that it should be a young black man who made us dance and cry and sing along: “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery.”

Perhaps the cynicism I have worn so long and so proudly at times was my ‘mental slavery’. Perhaps the whole thing was in my head. But that afternoon will stay with me for a long time. And, in the year when Bob Marley would have celebrated his 65th birthday, I will remember his words, sung by a small black man in a too-big t-shirt, with a baseball cap pulled low down over his eyes, and be thankful for them.

“‘Cause all I ever had:
Redemption songs -
All I ever had:
Redemption songs:
These songs of freedom,
Songs of freedom.”

“Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.”

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Goodbye Uncle Tom: Most Perverted Film Ever?

Staff — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:23:10 +0000

Goodbye Uncle Tom is possibly the most politically incorrect “shockumentary” you’re ever likely to see. A disgusting, perverted, apparently hysterical, look at the slave trade in the mid 1800s by Italian directors Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi.

Filmed almost entirely in Haiti with virtually the whole population of Port-au-Prince as extras, Goodbye Uncle Tom is the story of two documentary filmmakers who go back in time to the pre-Civil War American South to film the trade in enslaved Africans.

Accused of racism in 1966 with the release of their Africa Addio – Adios Africa or Africa Blood and Guts in English – the Italian directors came up with this ‘Art House’ shocker by way of apology, supposedly. But this ain’t Alex Haley’s Roots: The Sage of an American Family (1977)–it is a graphic, vicious and violent depiction of slavery as carried out less than 150 years ago and more recently.

We apologise in advance if some of you are offended by the scenes of brutality, nudity and violence in this film intended for adults only. The entire movie of Goodbye Uncle Tom is available on YouTube in ten-minute segments, but we wanted to show it here in its entirety to illustrate just how mentally, morally, and spiritually corrupt and inhuman man can be to his fellow man. With so much talk in cyberspace currently on how God must have cursed Haiti to reap such destruction on the country; the significance or not of history, voodoo rituals, and the question of reparations, we thought you might like to see a glimpse of just what life was like for many millions of enslaved Africans.

As with the Jewish Holocaust, we believe that the true horrors of the transatlantic slave trade and its consequences for the under-development of Africa and people of African descent should be taught in schools everywhere, so that we may never reproduce similar conditions for any group of people at any time in the future. What say you?

“The horror! The horror!”

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The Straight Story (Review)

Paul Boakye — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 17:57:20 +0000

What could be so enthralling about an ailing old geezer travelling on a lawnmower some 240+ miles across the heartland of America from Laurens, Iowa, to Mount Zion (and I don’t mean the Rastafarian promised land), but a place in Wisconsin?

Nothing much in the hands of any ordinary director--but David Lynch and screenwriters, John Roach and Mary Sweeney, imbue this simple tale with enough wisdom and colourful stories and characters from the life of the real 73-year old Alvin Straight, a World War II veteran, as to make this film an unmissable tear-jerker.

“You don’t think about getting old when you’re young,” Alvin muses, “but there’s nothing good about being lame and blind at the same time.” He’s making the long road trip at 5-miles an hour to see his estranged 75-year old brother, Lyle, who’s just had a stroke.

Alvin has decided to put there differences aside and make the journey his way. But “the worst part about being old is remembering when you were young,” and along the way he meets some fascinating people and passes on his words of wisdom.

The Straight Story is gentle, touching film about old age and forgiveness--a wonderful little road movie that reminds us all of the kindness of strangers.

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The Swenkas (Review)

Staff — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 08:55:28 +0000

This is the story of The Swenkas, a small group of working Zulu men in post-apartheid South Africa. Men who every Saturday night leave their grimy overalls behind and wear their best Carducci or Pierre Cardin suits to impress the weekly-selected judge. These men are called the Swenkas, and they have organised this fashion show for so many years that no one remembers exactly when – or even why – it all began.

Normally, the prize for best suit and style of the night is money, but on special occasions like Christmas the winner walks home with a living goat or even a cow on a leash. And this story starts at Christmas time. It follows the youngest Swenka, Sabelo (now 31) in the most turbulent time of his life. He has to bury his father just a week before Christmas – and only a week before his own wedding. But not only has Sabelo lost a father. His father was also leader of the Swenkas, and now Sabelo and his fellow Swenkas find themselves in a state of incertitude. Will Sabelo give up swanking? Will the group find a new leader? Will the art of swanking go on?

Here is a tenderly-told tale about the importance of preserving cultural traditions, and the role of fathers in passing on knowledge to their sons. Beautifully filmed and acted, the film has a simple elegance that seems to weld its various acts into a whole much greater than the sum of its parts. The scenes between ‘fathers’ and ‘sons’ are particularly pertinent and heart wrenching, while the rest is not without the gentle punch of humour. Watch it, and you might just weep.

The Swenkas is the second part of the trilogy Faith, Hope & Love, preceded by the multiple award-winning, Jerusalem My Love. The Swenkas took the viewers award at the International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam.

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Is This Film Racist? Song of the South (1946)

Staff — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:18:38 +0000

The controversial Song of the South has never been released in its entirety on home video in the USA because of content believed to be racially insensitive.

Is this film racist? Should it not be seen? What do you think?

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In Search of Anokye’s Sword

Paul Boakye — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:30:17 +0000

Dear Oprah–A prince and a shaman on a quest to free their people from a tyrannical overlord, but who must first achieve the impossible by uniting all the clans of Akan, was a movie storyline sure to peak my curiosity. Facebook can be like that, throwing up random happenings in your network of contacts that are often more miss than hit. But this one looked different. Won’t you take a look?

I caught up with Akua Ofosuhene, director/co-producer of Anokye’s Sword, to find out if there was any substance behind the fabulous images that grabbed my attention. Hopefully, they will grab you and the team at Harpo, too.

Your film is based on the history and legend Okomfo Anokye (the lawgiver), and Osei Tutu (the warrior), both co-founders of the Empire of Ashanti. Is there a message in it for a modern audience?
Anokye and Tutu grew up in a world where people’s identities were fixed by blood and custom. They realised that the only way to improve their fortunes and that of generations to come was to re-create themselves, based on their aspirations. They developed a confederation that ignored peoples past and instead stressed what each had contributed to the act of union. I think this is a powerful concept for a modern audience. We live in a period when people are divided by ethnicity, sexual orientation and religious conviction. Each group longs for equality and fairness and yet cannot see how to achieve this. Each group has contributed blood and lives in two world wars and yet remain disenfranchised and cannot come together. I think our modern world has never been so ready for a story like this. We need to start thinking outside the box about what it is we want to be in the future. What kind of world we want to leave to our children, and how we can achieve that. The story of Anokye and Tutu opens a new way of thinking about identity and equality.

Who wrote the film and what inspired the author(s)? Are you familiar with the magic realism of Ayi Kwei Armah in Two Thousand Seasons or The Healers for example?
I wrote the original story and treatment. Oludipo Agboluaje is our script writer. He is a former lecturer in African Literature at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), so he understands that in Africa the world of the spirit and reality can be very closely linked. I recently read The Healers for the first time, and really liked it, but my first introduction to West African magic realism was Ben Okri’s The Famished Road. It helped me understand that there is an African sensitivity when it comes to exploring the spirit and the unseen.

The images we’ve seen so far from your film are extraordinary. What does animation bring to the project, and how will the script live up to the promise?
Originally, the project was to be a documentary with some animation, but when Lily Ross, my co-producer, read the synopsis and saw the artwork of Nando Nkrumah (art director), she knew it should be an animation. For me, as director, this has freed me to tell the story in a different way. I have been allowed to rework the narrative of a true story to make it suit a modern audience.

Oludipo Agboluaje is an extraordinary writer, after seeing the production of his play The First Wife at the Soho theatre, I realised that Oludipo writes in English, while leaving you with the feeling that you are listening in the original African language. This is an extraordinary ability. I think the Oludipo’s script is what will bring the artwork to life.

Oludipo Agboluaje, Nando Nkrumah and I, work very closely together. So if you think the artwork is good, wait until you see the moving images and hear the spoken words. We hope to have a trailer by spring 2010 as we approach the finest acting talent of Africa and her Diaspora for suitable voices and music.

What are your distribution plans for the project?
Our plan is to work hard to get good international distribution. Distributors, at present, ignore huge chunks of our planet where black people live because of the way they divide the world. There is too much concentration on the American market and an accepted doctrine that Asia does not consume black / African films. We are looking to work with sales agents and distributors who specialize in different world markets so that the magic of our film can be seen and our art can get a fair chance of doing well. The international distribution of Kirikou & the Sorceress is a film we have studied very carefully, and we hope to capitalize on its success. Nollywood and Ghallywood distribution models tend to get ignored by the mainstream, even though they are the only profitable source of African film making. We intend to explore all distribution channels open to our film.

What audiences do you envisage for this film, and what lasting impression should they take away after seeing it?

Anokye’s Sword will appeal to a family audience. This has always been important to me. My son is seven years old, so the only films we watch together have PG certificates. I find that the best ones inform us both. They lead to conversations about big concepts, such as fairness, the ability to change, the importance of standing up for what is right, looking after the environment, and so on.

The Anokye story is universal and one that I feel people around the world will enjoy. Most of the world has heard of the legend of King Arthur and the sword in the stone. But it is we Ghanaians (Akans) that have an actual immoveable sword in existence. Most colonized peoples lost their most sacred treasures, but we in Ghana fought and kept the Golden stool. This is a very powerful symbol. My hope is that this film leads to conversations about the kind of world we want and the importance of preserving nature. I do not think that one film can change the world, but it can add a new line of dialogue. Perhaps, most important for me, is that Africans should be reminded that we have chosen our destinies before and we can do so again.

How does the internet aid you in your work?
The internet is vital in our strategy to break down walls and move mountains in reaching our core audience. This production started with no budget. We have a strong will to tell this story. We know that the first thing any film executive will say when shown a screenplay for an African project is “there’s no audience for a ‘positive’ African film,” so it is our business to build that audience! The internet is the cheapest and most effective way to find out if anyone out there wants to hear and see this story. So far, so good, the response has been astonishing. We have had contact from people as far away as Saudi Arabia, Ghana, Nigeria and Brazil. Most of these contacts are not donating money, but they are still capital because they are helping us to reach a wide and diverse international audience hungry for different stories.

Our strategy has been two fold. First, to raise awareness and build an audience, which is why we have made public the artistic stages of the production. The second, has been to raise the first portion of the pre-production budget. For example, we decided to allow people to have a character based on their likeness for a £50, so we could begin to have the artwork drawn. Each time we release artwork online, we increase engagement and donations to the project, this we hope will lead us to the larger sums we need to bring the production to life. We initially released the mood board, which contains the colour palette and real life references from Ghana that I wanted to use to influence the first poster.

We have also released the first painted scene from the animation, but to see the full picture, we ask that you to become a member of the website, which gives you full access to members-only material. A month or so later, we added all the images that we had worked through to get to that final look and style of the animation. We are currently drawing up most of the characters and locations, so we are thinking up new ways of releasing that artwork into the public domain. This, we hope, will help us raise the £7,000 needed to make the trailer.

Who are your key players and what do they each bring to the project?
We are very fortunate to have a dedicated team who support the production wholeheartedly. I, Akua Ofosuhene, am the director and the film’s co-producer with Lily Ross. I work on Anokye full-time. I am also a mum and I do event filming work, while we are in pre production. Nando Nkrumah, art director is based in Germany and comes up with all the amazing pictures you’ve seen. I met Nando online when I was researching the documentary about Komfo Anokye and Osei Tutu. Nando had a series of illustrations about Anokye called Sankofiction on Myspace. We talked online for about a year before we finally met. Oludipo Agboluaje is the scriptwriter; it was the happiest day of the production so far when he accepted the job as writer. We know that we will need the highest calibre talent to bring this production through. That is why we always go straight to the top. Time Out called Oludipo ‘One of Britain’s best young writers.’ Paola Brunetti is our PA, Fatima Oliwer and Makeba Boateng look after PR and marketing. Jacob Webb is our production secretary.

Which film-makers inspire you and why? What’s next?
My favourite film-maker is Spike Lee. He has enormous energy and drive. I am also a big fan of Ishmael Balgrove from Rice & Peas production. I like their documentaries and their independent film-making spirit. Our immediate objective is preparing our investment documents, which we will soon send out to prospective backers. We are also working on the trailer at the moment and planning our presences at Cannes 2010 where we hope to raise the production budget.

The Anokye story is larger than just a film. We are working with an author to bring out a range of children’s books and will be posting free downloadable work sheets for parents and children to use at home. Our documentary, The Komfo Anokye Story, is currently in post production and will be on sale through Amazon and our website in December 2009.

Are there any challenges, financial or otherwise?
Most of the challenges we face in the making of Anokye are financial ones. Animation is an expensive art form. The preproduction alone is costing around £100,000, the production costs will be in the millions and so will the cost of distribution. Naturally there are personal challenges involved in trying to make a living while we are in this preproduction phase, but I feel I was born to make this film so all obstacles just have to be got over. End of story.

How can readers support?
Readers can support the production of Anokye’s Sword by donating or investing in the preproduction process. No matter how small your generosity, we hope this project will offer something for everyone who would like to see this story come to life.

Readers can buy Anokye merchandise from our website. For just £20, they get a bag, a pen, a poster and two postcards. For a donation of £50 or more, they can have an animation character based on their likeness. Always a special treat for children. We are lucky enough to have found the face of our young Anokye this way. He came to our first fundraising event at the Bernie Grant Art Centre in September 2009.

Our investment options promise a 10% return on capital on the first day of production, as well as government tax breaks for investors in films. We are planning an investors meeting in London’s West end in the New Year. There, we will present our business plan and the names of the acting talent involved in the project. If you would like to learn more about investing and be sent an investment pack, please contact us.

We are always happy to work with freelance journalists involved in the arts, internet and marketing arena as a way to get our extraordinary story of courage, hope and perseverance out into different segments of the media.

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The Perfect Picture

Vera Kufuor — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:42:45 +0000

The Perfect Picture is the third film from writer/director/producer, Shirley Frimpong Manson--and is a romantic comedy shot in the industrial and commercial landscape of Takoradi, Ghana.

The film showcases the love lives of young, affluent, middle-class people, and from the first few flicks, what seems like the perfect marriage has turned sour as newly-wedded Aseye (Jackie Appiah) and Larry (Chris Attoh) find themselves unable to make love.

After doctor Anderson (Kweku Sintim Misa) declares them sexually fit, they practice his suggestions, yet nothing changes the couple’s situation. Which one of them is unable to arouse the other? Is marriage before sex really such an ideal situation? In a desperate bid to save their relationship, Aseye sneaks best friend, Dede (Lydia Forson) into her home at night, so that she could sleep with Larry, who in the meanwhile, would be too drunk to know exactly what was happening. Things get even uglier when Aseye finds out that she has been the problem all along, not her husband.

For the corporate woman, Akasi (Naa Ashorkor Mensah Doku), things get better when her interests shift from a successful business tycoon (who rarely has time for her) to Pusher (Adjetey Anang), a seemingly poor air-conditioning mechanic who is really a rich lawyer in disguise. Is marriage finally going to be in her plans? There may be hope for a perfect picture after all.

Whether or not, there was insufficient use of the local lingua (pidgin) as some argue, that did not detract from the praises bestowed on the film by Ghanaians and international audiences alike. With a western stamp of quality for cinematography for Shirley Frimpong Manson’s earlier releases (Life and Living It and Scorned), The Perfect Picture is another breath of fresh air for Ghanaian/Nigerian cinema where quality can often be a let-down.

Shirley Frimpong Manso, CEO of Sparrow Productions, has managed to bring the best out of her cast, including Jackie Appiah, a household name in the Ghanaian movie industry. The film’s premier was described as easily “the best in Ghana’s movie history” with long queues of eager movie-goers. According to Albert Mensah, General Manager of Silverbird Ghana Entertainment Limited, “Shirley Frimpong Manson’s ‘Perfect Picture’ is good. We showed it for over six weeks with the cinemas filled every day. The movie actually broke box office records.”

With throngs of sponsors and demand for all of Shirley Frimpong Manso’s films, there is now clear proof that women are beginning to break through the male-dominated world of African cinema.

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Deliverance (film classic)

Paul Boakye — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:06:42 +0000

Deliverance (1972) is British director John Boorman’s gripping action-adventure about four suburban businessmen on a disastrous weekend’s river-canoeing trip. It ranks as one of my favourite films. I can never tire of seeing it. The horror starts in this clip below.

As one of the first films with the theme of city-dwellers against the powerful forces of nature, the exciting box-office hit is most remembered for its inspired banjo duel and the brutal, violent action (and sodomy scene). Based on James Dickey’s adaptation of his 1970 best-selling début novel of the same name. He contributed the screenplay and acted in a minor role as the town sheriff.

The stark, uncompromising film was nominated for three Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing), but went away Oscar-less. The beautifully-photographed film, shot entirely on location (in northern Georgia’s Rabun County that is bisected by the Chattooga River), was the least-nominated film among the other Best Picture nominees. Ex-stuntman Burt Reynolds took the role of bow-and-arrow expert Lewis after it was turned down by James Stewart, Marlon Brando, and Henry Fonda on account of its on-location hazards.

The increasingly claustrophobic, downbeat film, shot in linear sequence along forty miles of a treacherous river, has been looked upon as a philosophical or mythical allegory of man’s psychological and grueling physical journey against adversity. It came during the 70s when many other conspiracy or corruption-related films were made with misgivings, paranoia, or questioning societal institutions, like the media;

Dog Day Afternoon (1975), and Network (1976), politics; The Parallax View (1974), All The President’s Men (1976), science; Coma (1978), Capricorn One (1978), The China Syndrome (1979), and various parts of the US itself; Race With The Devil (1975), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), and later Southern Comfort(1981).

A group of urban dwellers test their manhood and courage. Totally vulnerable in the alien wild, they pit themselves against the hostile violence of nature. At times, however, they are attracted to nature, and exhilarated and joyful about their experiences in the wild. Director Boorman pursued the same complex eco-message of Man vs. Nature in other films, including Zardoz (1973) and The Emerald Forest (1985). As they progress further and further down rapids and along uncharted territory, the men ‘rape’ an untouched, virginal wilderness, just as they are themselves violated by the pristine wilderness and its degenerate, backward, inbred inhabitants. Basic survivalist skills come to the forefront when civilized standards of decency and logic fail.

The river is the potent personification of the complex, natural forces that propel men further and further along their paths. It tests their personal values, exhibiting the conflict between country and city, and accentuates what has been hidden or unrealised in civilised society. The adventurers vainly seek to be ‘delivered’ from the evil in their own hearts, and as in typical horror film mode, confront other-worldly forces in the deep forest. Flooding of the region after the completion of a dam construction project alludes to the purification and cleansing of the sins of the world by the Great Flood.

The film was also interpreted as an allegory of US involvement in the Vietnam War. These men (the US military) intruded into a foreign world (South-East Asia), and found it raped or were confronted by wild forces they could not understand or control.

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